Clarity
by Shewritesstuff
Summary: Strong. Steady. Someone to hold onto - Bamon


**Clarity.**

**A/N: ** This was in my head. Now it is on your screen.

"This place is going down isn't it?"

The ground beneath Damon's feet trembled, shaking ever so slightly just to remind them of their imminent doom, but her voice, it not once faltered.

"It is."

Strong. Steady. Something to hold onto.

His brows furled as he bit back any real reaction other than mild concern. Yet in that moment of quiet whilst everything else around them came to life – _one_ _last hoorah _before thundering into oblivion, Bonnie made it clear it wasn't just him that felt the crushing weight of it all. They were facing the end. There were no post-credits scenes or promise of sequels for them. This was no temporary reprieve from life or a roadblock, a mere nuisance they had to endure as they transitioned or rose again like mythical birds from furious fires. What they were facing this time was the finishing line.

It absolutely terrified him.

It took the prospect of death for Damon to feel his heart beat with any real intensity. So this is what it means – _living_. And he only had to die to finally feel it again. Nearly two centuries of self-pitying and cursing the world would be invalidated in a fraction of a second by the brightest of lights. The truth stood before him – illuminated. Damon Salvatore had – after all that raging – truly loved his life.

His infatuation with Katherine Pierce, then Elena Gilbert had consumed so much of it, he had almost forgotten he had an existence outside of it. Paradoxically, the largest chunk of his 173 years spent pining for either woman appeared now _infinitesimal_ in the scope of all he had lived through and experienced. Damon had loved others, he had family and friends. For despite all he told himself _he had friends_. Countless images of people he vehemently fought to keep out of his heart now filled his mind like sand in an hourglass counting down his last moments as the light intensified. He was choking on the inside, longing for a chance to return to even the worst moment of his long and weary life and feel any physical and mental agony it contained and escape this fresh misery he was in no way prepared to feel.

His life wasn't worthless. It meant something. _To him. _

If some–_somehow,_ he could see the other side of this and continue to exist, would go to every painful moment there was in his pitiful life and feel it all over again with all the urgency it deserved. Inwardly, Damon Salvatore unburdened to a God that let his father shoot him, in tongue he hadn't used since the days of dim candlelight and the feel of honest sunbeams on untainted flesh.

His outward silence must have been weighing on Bonnie but when she spoke in that familiar biting tone, it hardly registered with him.

"I'm sure there are a million people we_ both_ rather be with right now…" She trailed off for a second "But…" The word betrayed a surprising amount of vulnerability as she finished on a sorrowful whisper that under any ordinary circumstances would have thrown him.

Today, nothing could reach him.

Yet her sudden touch_ forced him back._

An intake of breath to prove he was no longer choking.

He responded. "Couple thousand at most."

There it was – or more accurately there it should have been. The facetiousness that comforted him for centuries in the direst of places. The joke that would distract from the blood and destruction that usually followed whenever the elder Salvatore was involved. But her touch did much more than simply resuscitate his ability to bring levity to situations where it cannot be humanly maintained.

She chuckled almost and it was enough to bring them to tears. Had they any strength to cry between them they would have howled without shame. But they had none. There was another moment of silence and Damon knew they were mourning for each other in a way those they left behind could never.

"Do you think it will hurt?"

Her small soft hand clung onto Damon's as the ground quaked in ways her voice refused to. Chin held high, Bonnie Bennett's eyes fixed intently on the unknown beam before them as it prepared to slowly swallow them both. Yet he saw a young woman of just eighteen, beside him, preparing herself to somehow match its intensity every bit with a terrible light of her own.

Strong, steady and_ someone _to hold on to.

Her touch brought to the surface this sincerity that under any other circumstance would have scared him to death. Yet in this place, in this moment the bright lights of death brought clarity above anything else. The kind of clarity that brought comfort in knowing simultaneously everything that was, is and would never be Damon Salvatore.

With the last of his strength Damon squeezed Bonnie's hand – _hard_ – no longer feeling the need to ever again hide from harsh lights or hard truths but just simply bathe in the comfort of hers.

"**I don't kno - "**


End file.
